Students benefit in many ways by taking field trips to forests. Improved academic performance, increased participation in outdoor recreation, and a better grasp of natural resources management are some of the advantages. However, trips are not easy for teachers to organize and lead. Declining budgets, on-campus schedules, and standards of learning are but a few of the constraints. With this in mind we studied the use of forest field trips among high school science teachers in the Southern Piedmont of the United States. We asked them if they have ever led a field trip to a forest for instructional purposes and measured their perceived constraints, teaching characteristics, natural resources training and extra-curricular activities, and proximity of their school to a forest. Binary logistic regression was used to model the relationship between these data and whether a teacher had taken a class on a forest field trip. Teachers also were asked to comment about trip constraints. Under half had led a forest field trip and qualitative data suggest that constraints such as time, money, and standardization are significant. However, model results indicate that walking distance to a forest, confidence in teaching topics related to forests, and participation in natural resources school programs predict field trip use (chi[superscript 2] = 127.81). Findings will help develop strategies for incorporating forest field trips into secondary science curriculum.